Somebody's Been Shot (Somebody's Been Abused)
Title: Somebody’s Been Shot (Somebody’s Been Abused)
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Dean/Gabriel
Spoilers/Warnings: Lessee. Past alcoholism, past physical abuse, fair bit of angst...
Summary: Dean’s an idiot and Gabriel’s back where he started.
Notes: Fourth and last part of the Justice Verse. This ‘verse is technically complete, now, but I may come back to play in this particular sandbox at some point.
Guys, this is the longest storyline that I’ve written in years. All told, this ‘verse comes out to 8,824 words. Thanks so much to moorishflower and zekkass for their help and support for this thing. I’m fairly certain most of this wouldn’t have been written without them. Also, thanks to moonofblindness for assuring me that this particular part doesn’t suck. :)
Gabriel is small for his age and the youngest of four. He’s used to people not noticing him or, if they do, being teased.
His brothers are no exception, with Michael seemingly ignoring the very fact that Gabriel exists and Lucifer and Raphael taking no notice of him unless he happens to get in their way. If Gabriel can catch Lucifer alone, though, his brother will sometimes let him help as he fiddles around with the broken down car in the side yard. Gabriel likes those times.
Their parents die when Gabriel is twelve. Michael’s nineteen and already gone, studying up at some college in Massachusetts and they only receive a short letter from him bearing his condolences. Lucifer, Raphael and Gabriel are still at home, though and in the aftermaths of the tragedy, they’re shunted from relative to relative until they end up with their uncle Zachariah and his three sons in Virginia.
Uncle Zachariah lives on a large plantation and he puts them to work as soon as they arrive. All six of them are out in the fields from shortly after dawn well into the evening, taking a break only for lunch.
Gabriel expects to be forgotten, ignored like he has been his whole life, but Zachariah has a sharp eye and it always seems to land on Gabriel. He never seems to do anything right; he spills too much water when fetching buckets from the well, he takes too long feeding the livestock, he slacks off when they're weeding through the vegetables. The only thing sharper than Uncle Zachariah’s eye is the sting of the riding crop he carries around. A week of living with him leaves Gabriel with a dozen or so tender welts across his shoulders and back.
Lucifer and Raphael aren’t spared, not completely, but it’s Gabriel that bears the brunt of their uncle’s disapproval. Weeks and months crawl by, the passage of time marked only by the change in weather, Gabriel’s growth and the increasing severity of the floggings.
He never does grow as tall or broad as his brothers. Michael, Lucifer and Raphael all take after their father; tall and burly. Gabriel looks in the mirror and can count off half a dozen things that he’s inherited from his mother. Sandy brown hair; light brown, almost gold, eyes; thin, lean body; long, slender fingers; a pointed chin; the way his nose turns up at the end.
Zachariah begins to drink when Gabriel is sixteen and by the time he’s nineteen, his uncle is nearly always stumbling around in a drunken haze. The beatings come randomly and without warning, no longer accompanied with even a facsimile of a justification. Michael hasn’t written in years, Lucifer’s managed to get himself off to school and Raphael’s thrown his lot in with his cousins.
Shortly after Gabriel’s twentieth birthday-remarked upon only by himself-his eldest cousin, Caleb, is killed when the plow unexpectedly breaks down, a heavy piece of machinery falling directly on him. Gabriel was supposed to be out in the field that day, as well, but when the news reaches the house, he’s in the barn. He is flogged and doesn’t attend the funeral.
He wouldn’t have wanted to go even if Zachariah had let him.
Raphael and the two remaining cousins take it upon themselves to make his life miserable after that, tormenting him in their spare time and making him do their chores while they go into town to watch the pretty girls. Gabriel doesn’t try to retaliate directly, but he sneaks into town when he can and tells all the girls wild stories about what his brother and cousins get up to and smiles to himself when he hears them complain about how the girls stopped paying them mind.
Jacob, the youngest cousin, dies four months later when the bull gets loose and leaves him a bloody mess. The bull is put down, Gabriel is flogged for not properly shutting the gate and Jacob is buried next to Caleb.
Raphael and Paul, the remaining cousin, become actively malicious in their tormenting of Gabriel. It’s only by pure luck that he escapes serious injury on three separate occasions. Gabriel doesn’t bother retaliating in any way, this time, just takes the insults and shoves and stares at nothing.
Raphael dies with Gabriel working right next to him when Gabriel is twenty-two. Gabriel stares at his brother’s body, broken on the barn floor thirty feet down with his head twisted unnaturally, then slowly climbs down the ladder and goes up to the house to tell someone.
Zachariah beats him enough that Gabriel is left unconscious for several hours.
Paul avoids Gabriel after that.
A year later, the house burns down with Paul and Zachariah inside while Gabriel is in town. After hearing the news, he smiles. He doesn’t stay for the funeral and is on the road within an hour, a bag slung over his shoulder and no destination in mind.
Four months later, he stops in Lawrence, Kansas.
~*~
“Dean’s an idiot.”
It’s what Sam said when Gabriel was grabbing his pack and it’s what Gabriel’s been repeating to himself for the past six days.
“Dean’s an idiot,” he mutters again. He tightens his hand around the pack’s strap and keeps walking. The ground’s uneven under his feet and he stares down, half to watch where he’s going and half so he can’t see where he’s going.
He’d left his mare with the Winchesters. It would have been nice to be able to ride instead of walk, but she wasn’t really his and the Winchesters would probably take better care of her, anyway. Besides, he sort of likes walking. It was mindless, almost soothing in its repetitive movements.
“Dean’s an idiot.”
Green eyes, wide and half desperate, half bleak, swim to the front of his mind and he scowls, focuses on individual pebbles until the memory slips back into the back of his mind.
He should have realized it wouldn’t last.
He should never have stopped in Lawrence. That’s when everything started to happen, after all. Yeah. No Lawrence, no Winchesters. No Winchesters, no Dean. No Dean, no hope. No hope, no pain when it all came crashing down.
One foot in front of the other. Dean’s an idiot.
Gabriel ignores as best he can the nearly physical ache in his chest and keeps walking.
~*~
When he next stops for more than a night, it’s in Ohio. There’s a server girl in the bar that doesn’t charge him for the glasses of water he drinks and he earns his keep mucking out the stables. He doesn’t socialize, doesn’t make an effort to strike up a conversation with anyone. He’s learned his lesson.
He stays for a week.
~*~
After Ohio, he goes south to West Virginia and North Carolina. It’s been four weeks since he last saw the Winchesters, right along the border of Tennessee and Kentucky.
When he leaves North Carolina, he walks north, to Virginia, retracing his steps from nearly seven months ago. He skirts the town, walks right up to where the front door of the large house had been.
No one’s bothered to rebuild the place and there is charred wood and cold ash everywhere. He walks around the side, just looking. There’s the front room, the only room that had had a hint of a feminine touch. The kitchen, the backroom, the dining room. Some of the support beams still stand, sticking up like bare fingers pointing at the sky, but the second floor seems to have collapsed almost entirely, only a few burnt boards still attached to the support beams.
He stands there for a few hours in the chilly air, looking and thinking.
Eventually, he turns and goes to the barn, curls up on a pile of hay with his one blanket pulled up tight and sleeps.
He’s only there for two days before the Winchesters show up.
~*~
He sees them before they see him, but he’s frozen, trying to think of what to do and Sam turns just far enough.
“Gabriel!”
He slumps, doesn’t bother moving away when Sam and Dean come close, just closes his eyes when Sam tugs him in for a tight embrace.
“We’ve been looking for you,” Sam says, not letting go. “You had us really scared.” He pulls away just a little bit. “Gabriel?”
Gabriel blinks open his eyes, lifts his gaze so that he’s looking at Sam’s jaw line.
“Shit. Dean, help me out. Get him into the barn.”
Sam tugs him around, guides him with broad hands over to the barn while Dean paces just ahead of them, hands stuffed deep into his jacket pockets. He hasn’t said a single thing, yet, Gabriel realizes. He snorts lightly. It’s probably a good thing. If Dean opened his mouth, Gabriel would have been tempted to slug him, just on principle.
Idiot.
Dean holds open the barn door for them, closes it behind himself when he follows them in. It doesn’t take Sam long to spot Gabriel’s blanket and the few things he’d been carrying and his face goes stormy, nostrils flaring. His voice is even, though, when he speaks again.
“Find us a lamp or something, would you, Dean?”
The elder Winchester nods and disappears to a different section of the barn, out of view, though Gabriel can still hear him walking around. Sam sighs as soon as Dean’s gone, nudging Gabriel onto a nearby bench and sitting down next to him.
“Dean’s an idiot,” Sam says. Gabriel huffs.
“And rain’s wet.”
Sam grimaces. “Yeah. He’s…not exactly used to having someone mean that much that isn’t blood related. I’m sort of surprised he didn’t screw up sooner, you know?”
“No, Sam, I don’t know.” Gabriel closes his eyes and leans back against the stall behind him. “I’ve only known you guys for a couple of months and De-he’s not exactly forthcoming with the details about his past. I thought…Well, doesn’t matter what I thought. Obviously, I was wrong.”
“Hmm.”
They’re quiet for a few minutes, listening to the faint sounds of Dean rummaging around, looking for a lantern. Then Sam nudges Gabriel with his shoulder and Gabriel opens one eye to look at him.
“Missouri laid into him pretty good when she found out.”
Gabriel has to smile a bit at that, remembering the woman with fondness. “How’d she find out?”
“We went back, after you left. Thought maybe you’d have gone there. Dean busted in and just started searching the place before Missouri got a hand on him. Had to tell her the whole story, then. She spent a good hour or two yelling at Dean.” He pauses, smirking a bit. “I got cookies and tea.”
“Of course, you did,” Gabriel says, grinning. The grin fades a moment later. “How’d you find me here?”
Sam shrugs. “Once we’d figured out you hadn’t gone to Missouri’s, we had to sit down and think. Not like you’ve been Mister Talkative, yourself, so we didn’t have much to go on regarding places you’d be familiar with. Then I remembered you saying how you’d come from Virginia and Dean nearly left right then and there. He was a mess.”
Gabriel says nothing, just studies his hands. He’s in no rush to forgive Dean, has the feeling that Sam would back him up if he decides to hold out a while longer. All the reasoning in the world won’t fix what happened. And Gabriel’s not really the type to forgive and forget, anyway. Never has been.
But this time, he sort of wants to.
“Being sorry doesn’t make anything better,” he says softly. Sam sighs.
“Yeah, I know. But is it enough to give him another chance? Let him make it up, prove he won’t do it again?”
Something in Sam’s voice makes Gabriel look up, but as he does so, he sees Dean, leaning against a stall further down the aisle, a lantern hanging from one hand. He studies the tall man, from messy hair that looks like it’s been on the receiving end of Dean’s frustration a lot recently to deep green eyes that hold a world of pain and hope to the way his knuckles are turning white where he’s holding the thin metal handle of the lantern.
He’s not surprised by the heat that pools low in his gut. He stopped being surprised by that a week and a half in. What does surprise him is how much it hurts, looking at Dean now.
It hurts that he gambled so much on this one man, only to have it tossed in his face. It hurts that he can’t just fall into Dean, let the warmth and affection he knows Dean can give wash everything else away. It hurts that he’s not sure he will ever be able to, after what happened.
“I don’t know,” he says. It sounds too loud, now and he watches Dean flinch as if the words were something physical. That hurts, too. “I can’t let myself be hurt again,” he admits.
Dean nods, as if Gabriel’s verdict had been expected. His eyes fall as pain drowns the hope and he turns, whether to go or to simply move Gabriel never knows.
What he does know is that he can’t let himself be hurt again, it’s true. But he also can’t be the one to cause such pain in Dean. And that is scarier than the possibility of getting burned again.
He’s moving before he’s made a conscious decision to, reaching out to pull Dean around and leaning up to press his lips to Dean’s. One of Dean’s hands comes up to his shoulder, holds it for a moment before sliding around to the back of Gabriel’s neck.
It’s a full minute before Gabriel can pull back far enough to breathe, let alone say anything.
“Don’t you dare do that ever again,” he growls. Dean drops the lantern and wraps both arms around him securely.
“I won’t,” he promises. “Come back to Lawrence with me?”
Gabriel looks at him, steady and full-on. He’s still hurt by what Dean’s done and he can still see guilt in Dean’s eyes, but both of them are invested in this, want this to work out. The road back may be bumpy, but Gabriel’s got a feeling they’ll be floating high enough to not be bothered all that much.
“Yes,” he says. Then he kisses Dean again, just because he can.
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Dean/Gabriel
Spoilers/Warnings: Lessee. Past alcoholism, past physical abuse, fair bit of angst...
Summary: Dean’s an idiot and Gabriel’s back where he started.
Notes: Fourth and last part of the Justice Verse. This ‘verse is technically complete, now, but I may come back to play in this particular sandbox at some point.
Guys, this is the longest storyline that I’ve written in years. All told, this ‘verse comes out to 8,824 words. Thanks so much to moorishflower and zekkass for their help and support for this thing. I’m fairly certain most of this wouldn’t have been written without them. Also, thanks to moonofblindness for assuring me that this particular part doesn’t suck. :)
Gabriel is small for his age and the youngest of four. He’s used to people not noticing him or, if they do, being teased.
His brothers are no exception, with Michael seemingly ignoring the very fact that Gabriel exists and Lucifer and Raphael taking no notice of him unless he happens to get in their way. If Gabriel can catch Lucifer alone, though, his brother will sometimes let him help as he fiddles around with the broken down car in the side yard. Gabriel likes those times.
Their parents die when Gabriel is twelve. Michael’s nineteen and already gone, studying up at some college in Massachusetts and they only receive a short letter from him bearing his condolences. Lucifer, Raphael and Gabriel are still at home, though and in the aftermaths of the tragedy, they’re shunted from relative to relative until they end up with their uncle Zachariah and his three sons in Virginia.
Uncle Zachariah lives on a large plantation and he puts them to work as soon as they arrive. All six of them are out in the fields from shortly after dawn well into the evening, taking a break only for lunch.
Gabriel expects to be forgotten, ignored like he has been his whole life, but Zachariah has a sharp eye and it always seems to land on Gabriel. He never seems to do anything right; he spills too much water when fetching buckets from the well, he takes too long feeding the livestock, he slacks off when they're weeding through the vegetables. The only thing sharper than Uncle Zachariah’s eye is the sting of the riding crop he carries around. A week of living with him leaves Gabriel with a dozen or so tender welts across his shoulders and back.
Lucifer and Raphael aren’t spared, not completely, but it’s Gabriel that bears the brunt of their uncle’s disapproval. Weeks and months crawl by, the passage of time marked only by the change in weather, Gabriel’s growth and the increasing severity of the floggings.
He never does grow as tall or broad as his brothers. Michael, Lucifer and Raphael all take after their father; tall and burly. Gabriel looks in the mirror and can count off half a dozen things that he’s inherited from his mother. Sandy brown hair; light brown, almost gold, eyes; thin, lean body; long, slender fingers; a pointed chin; the way his nose turns up at the end.
Zachariah begins to drink when Gabriel is sixteen and by the time he’s nineteen, his uncle is nearly always stumbling around in a drunken haze. The beatings come randomly and without warning, no longer accompanied with even a facsimile of a justification. Michael hasn’t written in years, Lucifer’s managed to get himself off to school and Raphael’s thrown his lot in with his cousins.
Shortly after Gabriel’s twentieth birthday-remarked upon only by himself-his eldest cousin, Caleb, is killed when the plow unexpectedly breaks down, a heavy piece of machinery falling directly on him. Gabriel was supposed to be out in the field that day, as well, but when the news reaches the house, he’s in the barn. He is flogged and doesn’t attend the funeral.
He wouldn’t have wanted to go even if Zachariah had let him.
Raphael and the two remaining cousins take it upon themselves to make his life miserable after that, tormenting him in their spare time and making him do their chores while they go into town to watch the pretty girls. Gabriel doesn’t try to retaliate directly, but he sneaks into town when he can and tells all the girls wild stories about what his brother and cousins get up to and smiles to himself when he hears them complain about how the girls stopped paying them mind.
Jacob, the youngest cousin, dies four months later when the bull gets loose and leaves him a bloody mess. The bull is put down, Gabriel is flogged for not properly shutting the gate and Jacob is buried next to Caleb.
Raphael and Paul, the remaining cousin, become actively malicious in their tormenting of Gabriel. It’s only by pure luck that he escapes serious injury on three separate occasions. Gabriel doesn’t bother retaliating in any way, this time, just takes the insults and shoves and stares at nothing.
Raphael dies with Gabriel working right next to him when Gabriel is twenty-two. Gabriel stares at his brother’s body, broken on the barn floor thirty feet down with his head twisted unnaturally, then slowly climbs down the ladder and goes up to the house to tell someone.
Zachariah beats him enough that Gabriel is left unconscious for several hours.
Paul avoids Gabriel after that.
A year later, the house burns down with Paul and Zachariah inside while Gabriel is in town. After hearing the news, he smiles. He doesn’t stay for the funeral and is on the road within an hour, a bag slung over his shoulder and no destination in mind.
Four months later, he stops in Lawrence, Kansas.
~*~
“Dean’s an idiot.”
It’s what Sam said when Gabriel was grabbing his pack and it’s what Gabriel’s been repeating to himself for the past six days.
“Dean’s an idiot,” he mutters again. He tightens his hand around the pack’s strap and keeps walking. The ground’s uneven under his feet and he stares down, half to watch where he’s going and half so he can’t see where he’s going.
He’d left his mare with the Winchesters. It would have been nice to be able to ride instead of walk, but she wasn’t really his and the Winchesters would probably take better care of her, anyway. Besides, he sort of likes walking. It was mindless, almost soothing in its repetitive movements.
“Dean’s an idiot.”
Green eyes, wide and half desperate, half bleak, swim to the front of his mind and he scowls, focuses on individual pebbles until the memory slips back into the back of his mind.
He should have realized it wouldn’t last.
He should never have stopped in Lawrence. That’s when everything started to happen, after all. Yeah. No Lawrence, no Winchesters. No Winchesters, no Dean. No Dean, no hope. No hope, no pain when it all came crashing down.
One foot in front of the other. Dean’s an idiot.
Gabriel ignores as best he can the nearly physical ache in his chest and keeps walking.
~*~
When he next stops for more than a night, it’s in Ohio. There’s a server girl in the bar that doesn’t charge him for the glasses of water he drinks and he earns his keep mucking out the stables. He doesn’t socialize, doesn’t make an effort to strike up a conversation with anyone. He’s learned his lesson.
He stays for a week.
~*~
After Ohio, he goes south to West Virginia and North Carolina. It’s been four weeks since he last saw the Winchesters, right along the border of Tennessee and Kentucky.
When he leaves North Carolina, he walks north, to Virginia, retracing his steps from nearly seven months ago. He skirts the town, walks right up to where the front door of the large house had been.
No one’s bothered to rebuild the place and there is charred wood and cold ash everywhere. He walks around the side, just looking. There’s the front room, the only room that had had a hint of a feminine touch. The kitchen, the backroom, the dining room. Some of the support beams still stand, sticking up like bare fingers pointing at the sky, but the second floor seems to have collapsed almost entirely, only a few burnt boards still attached to the support beams.
He stands there for a few hours in the chilly air, looking and thinking.
Eventually, he turns and goes to the barn, curls up on a pile of hay with his one blanket pulled up tight and sleeps.
He’s only there for two days before the Winchesters show up.
~*~
He sees them before they see him, but he’s frozen, trying to think of what to do and Sam turns just far enough.
“Gabriel!”
He slumps, doesn’t bother moving away when Sam and Dean come close, just closes his eyes when Sam tugs him in for a tight embrace.
“We’ve been looking for you,” Sam says, not letting go. “You had us really scared.” He pulls away just a little bit. “Gabriel?”
Gabriel blinks open his eyes, lifts his gaze so that he’s looking at Sam’s jaw line.
“Shit. Dean, help me out. Get him into the barn.”
Sam tugs him around, guides him with broad hands over to the barn while Dean paces just ahead of them, hands stuffed deep into his jacket pockets. He hasn’t said a single thing, yet, Gabriel realizes. He snorts lightly. It’s probably a good thing. If Dean opened his mouth, Gabriel would have been tempted to slug him, just on principle.
Idiot.
Dean holds open the barn door for them, closes it behind himself when he follows them in. It doesn’t take Sam long to spot Gabriel’s blanket and the few things he’d been carrying and his face goes stormy, nostrils flaring. His voice is even, though, when he speaks again.
“Find us a lamp or something, would you, Dean?”
The elder Winchester nods and disappears to a different section of the barn, out of view, though Gabriel can still hear him walking around. Sam sighs as soon as Dean’s gone, nudging Gabriel onto a nearby bench and sitting down next to him.
“Dean’s an idiot,” Sam says. Gabriel huffs.
“And rain’s wet.”
Sam grimaces. “Yeah. He’s…not exactly used to having someone mean that much that isn’t blood related. I’m sort of surprised he didn’t screw up sooner, you know?”
“No, Sam, I don’t know.” Gabriel closes his eyes and leans back against the stall behind him. “I’ve only known you guys for a couple of months and De-he’s not exactly forthcoming with the details about his past. I thought…Well, doesn’t matter what I thought. Obviously, I was wrong.”
“Hmm.”
They’re quiet for a few minutes, listening to the faint sounds of Dean rummaging around, looking for a lantern. Then Sam nudges Gabriel with his shoulder and Gabriel opens one eye to look at him.
“Missouri laid into him pretty good when she found out.”
Gabriel has to smile a bit at that, remembering the woman with fondness. “How’d she find out?”
“We went back, after you left. Thought maybe you’d have gone there. Dean busted in and just started searching the place before Missouri got a hand on him. Had to tell her the whole story, then. She spent a good hour or two yelling at Dean.” He pauses, smirking a bit. “I got cookies and tea.”
“Of course, you did,” Gabriel says, grinning. The grin fades a moment later. “How’d you find me here?”
Sam shrugs. “Once we’d figured out you hadn’t gone to Missouri’s, we had to sit down and think. Not like you’ve been Mister Talkative, yourself, so we didn’t have much to go on regarding places you’d be familiar with. Then I remembered you saying how you’d come from Virginia and Dean nearly left right then and there. He was a mess.”
Gabriel says nothing, just studies his hands. He’s in no rush to forgive Dean, has the feeling that Sam would back him up if he decides to hold out a while longer. All the reasoning in the world won’t fix what happened. And Gabriel’s not really the type to forgive and forget, anyway. Never has been.
But this time, he sort of wants to.
“Being sorry doesn’t make anything better,” he says softly. Sam sighs.
“Yeah, I know. But is it enough to give him another chance? Let him make it up, prove he won’t do it again?”
Something in Sam’s voice makes Gabriel look up, but as he does so, he sees Dean, leaning against a stall further down the aisle, a lantern hanging from one hand. He studies the tall man, from messy hair that looks like it’s been on the receiving end of Dean’s frustration a lot recently to deep green eyes that hold a world of pain and hope to the way his knuckles are turning white where he’s holding the thin metal handle of the lantern.
He’s not surprised by the heat that pools low in his gut. He stopped being surprised by that a week and a half in. What does surprise him is how much it hurts, looking at Dean now.
It hurts that he gambled so much on this one man, only to have it tossed in his face. It hurts that he can’t just fall into Dean, let the warmth and affection he knows Dean can give wash everything else away. It hurts that he’s not sure he will ever be able to, after what happened.
“I don’t know,” he says. It sounds too loud, now and he watches Dean flinch as if the words were something physical. That hurts, too. “I can’t let myself be hurt again,” he admits.
Dean nods, as if Gabriel’s verdict had been expected. His eyes fall as pain drowns the hope and he turns, whether to go or to simply move Gabriel never knows.
What he does know is that he can’t let himself be hurt again, it’s true. But he also can’t be the one to cause such pain in Dean. And that is scarier than the possibility of getting burned again.
He’s moving before he’s made a conscious decision to, reaching out to pull Dean around and leaning up to press his lips to Dean’s. One of Dean’s hands comes up to his shoulder, holds it for a moment before sliding around to the back of Gabriel’s neck.
It’s a full minute before Gabriel can pull back far enough to breathe, let alone say anything.
“Don’t you dare do that ever again,” he growls. Dean drops the lantern and wraps both arms around him securely.
“I won’t,” he promises. “Come back to Lawrence with me?”
Gabriel looks at him, steady and full-on. He’s still hurt by what Dean’s done and he can still see guilt in Dean’s eyes, but both of them are invested in this, want this to work out. The road back may be bumpy, but Gabriel’s got a feeling they’ll be floating high enough to not be bothered all that much.
“Yes,” he says. Then he kisses Dean again, just because he can.